


To Yield With a Grace to Reason

by OpenPandorasBox



Series: Explosions [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 20:02:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpenPandorasBox/pseuds/OpenPandorasBox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Oliver needs her help, Felicity tries to decline for what she considers to be some very good reasons. Oliver doesn't agree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Yield With a Grace to Reason

"No."

"Felicity," Oliver closed his eyes wearily as he spoke, "I can't reach it. If I could, don't you think I'd do it myself?"

Felicity shuddered. "That's not an image I needed to have in my head, thanks."

"Felicity."

"Oliver," Felicity sighed and eyed the forceps Oliver was holding out to her as though he were handing her a live grenade. "The closest I've come to a suture is Thanksgiving turkey, so you can't be serious."

"Do I sound like I'm joking?"

He didn't, Felicity had to admit. He sounded exhausted.

"I'll walk you through it," Oliver promised when she didn't move.

Felicity clasped her hands tightly against her stomach. "That's not nearly as comforting as you seem to think it is."

She turned to walk to the other side of the room. She stopped Oliver's inevitable question by raising her hands and waving them in the air.

"Relax. I'm washing my hands," she said. "The last thing we need is for you to pull an Alexander the Great." Thinking that she just hadn't heard Oliver's reply over the sound of the running water, Felicity glanced back over her shoulder only to find him staring blankly at her with a single raised eyebrow.

"Seriously?" Felicity rolled her eyes as she turned the water off and grabbed a towel to dry her hands. She continued talking as she walked over to him; more to calm the nerves threatening to burn a hole through her stomach than out of any real indignation at Oliver's obvious indifference to anything that could have been learnt by reading a book. "Did you also not happen to learn any world history at any of the four schools you dropped out of either?"

"I know who Alexander the Great was," Oliver tossed back as he watched her pull on a pair of latex gloves. She accepted the forceps and suturing needle from him, but the look on her face assured him that she'd probably rather be holding a poisonous snake.

"Then you know that he conquered most of the known world at the time and even he ended up dying from something really stupid like malaria or a bacterial infection," Felicity replied. She met his firm stare with worried eyes. She had the maddening urge to fidget, to step from side to side in an attempt to calm the nerves in her stomach, but she held herself still. "I've never done this before, Oliver. What if something goes wrong?" Her eyes widened. "What if I kill you?"

"Felicity," Oliver said firmly. "You're sewing my skin back together not performing open heart surgery."

"You're not going to let me talk myself out of this, are you?"

"No."

With a groan, Felicity stepped around Oliver to take a look at the gash just over his right shoulder. It was four inches long, its edges jagged and torn and deep enough that she couldn't in good conscience continue to refuse to stitch it up for him. With her stomach threatening to rebel against the sight, Felicity squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to take a long and deep calming breath.

"It's not like you haven't done something like this before," Oliver remarked gently. With her behind him, he could only hear her controlled breathing. She was standing close enough to him that he could feel her long exhalations blowing against the back of his neck.

"You were dying," she replied between breaths.

"So this should be less stressful."

"The adrenaline helped. It was probably the only thing keeping me on my feet."

"I don't think that's true, but I'll remember to ask for a more fatal wound next time," Oliver remarked dryly.

Felicity took one last breath and opened her eyes. The wound was still there, an angry tear in his skin. Squinting, she inspected it more closely to make sure she wasn't going to be closing it up with any debris left inside. Oliver had said he'd cleaned it, but it wasn't exactly in an easy to reach spot.

"This doesn't look like a knife wound," Felicity murmured quietly.

"I never said it was a knife wound," Oliver replied. He felt her fingers prodding gently along the edges, allowed himself a small wince at the sting, and readied himself for the needle to pierce his skin. "You're going to hold the needle point down and then move along the curve through the skin. Release the needle and pick it up on the other side to pull it and the thread out, leaving a tail for the knot. Then you do the same to the other side until the edges pull together. Knot it off at the end, cut the thread, and move on to the next one." Oliver glanced back at Felicity and caught her gaze. She looked calmer. He nodded back to her, "Easy."

"Right," Felicity chuckled nervously at that. "Easy."

"Don't worry about how it's going to look."

"You wouldn't be saying that if you'd seen my Thanksgiving turkey."

Oliver raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

Felicity cast him an apologetic look. "Meaning there was never any chance that it's going to look pretty."

Oliver felt her fingers still against skin and heard her quickly suck in a breath. Seconds later he felt the prick of a needle and closed his eyes against the gritty slide of the thread through the torn edges of his skin. He blew out a breath at the same time as he felt Felicity's against his neck and shoulder. He felt the second prick and the second slide and breathed again through the uncomfortable tug as the torn edges of the gash were slowly pulled back together.

They spent the next several minutes in silence as Felicity knotted the first suture and began each next one. The only sounds passing between them were the soft and steady rhythms of their breathing and the louder rumblings of the water moving through the old pipes of the abandoned warehouse. Oliver's breathing had adjusted to match the prick and pull of Felicity's sutures, both of them exhaling slowly with every long slide of the thread as Felicity closed off another stitch.

Felicity took to the task with a narrow and single minded focus. If she were completely honest with herself, it really wasn't altogether too different from the way she became completely absorbed by her work with computers – only with more blood and a greater need to suppress her gag reflex.

While she wasn't expecting to win any awards for her abilities, she was at least trying not to make Oliver's wound any worse and to do that she had to ignore everything else around her. She drove out the sounds of the warehouse in the background until they all blended together to form a perpetual hum of white noise. She fought the urge to wipe away the sweat beading up on her forehead and pushed away the itchy sensation of it dampening the material of her shirt between her shoulder blades. She noted with some interest the way Oliver's muscles tensed almost imperceptibly with the anticipation of each next stitch until she pushed that away as well and focused entirely on the steady up-down and rolling motions of the needle and thread.

On the seventh suture, Felicity's voice broke through the quiet, "So how did you get this then?"

Oliver frowned at the wall across from him. "The cut?"

Felicity rolled her eyes at the back of his head. "Only you would call this a cut."

"It's essentially a cut."

"No," Felicity replied slowly. "A cut is what I get when I come into close contact with a sheet of paper."

"Then just imagine that this was a very large sheet of paper."

"The edges are jagged," Felicity retorted.

"A serrated knife then."

"We've already established it wasn't." Felicity finished the stitch and started on what she thought would probably be the final one. "You do know that I can always access the security feeds."

Oliver sighed heavily, his head falling forward as he did. Felicity thought she heard him mutter something, but couldn't be sure. When he lifted his head again, Felicity was still waiting for a response.

"I got caught on a fence."

Felicity's hands stilled mid-stitch. Silence rose up between them again. Oliver stared at the wall in confusion. He was about to look over his shoulder when Felicity resumed her stitching.

"You know I was only joking about Alexander the Great," came her reply a moment later.

A small smile tugged at the corners of Oliver's lips and he had to bite back a laugh. Shaking his head at her he replied, "I have no intention of dying from tetanus, don't worry."

"No one ever intends to die from a bacterial infection," Felicity pointed out. She caught her tongue between her teeth as she focused on tying off the last suture. Snipping the ends of the thread short, she blew out a long breath and took a step back to critique her handiwork. She cringed.

"There's an upside to this," Felicity tried to reassure him as she reached over his shoulder to grab the large piece of gauze he was holding up to her. "It probably won't be the worst looking scar you've got."

Felicity finished taping down the bandage then stopped for a moment and thought about what she'd said.

"That's not what I meant," she added quickly. Wincing, she felt compelled to clarify, "Actually it is what I meant – sort of. But it probably sounds worse than how I'd meant it and I'm pretty sure I've just inadvertently offended myself more than I've offended you given the fact that you got those scars on a deserted island completely devoid of the miracles of modern medicine."

Felicity felt Oliver's laugh in the hand she'd left resting against his bare back. The sound was foreign enough that she couldn't quite stop a surprised expression from spreading across her face.

"Don't worry about it, Felicity," Oliver said gratefully. He rose slowly and turned to face her. He found her regarding him with raised eyebrows and he responded with a questioning tilt of his head.

Felicity smiled sheepishly, shaking her head and laughing quietly at herself as she carefully peeled off her latex gloves. Stepping around him, she walked back over to the sink to clean herself up and caught her reflection in the simple square mirror that hung on the wall over the sink. Short strands of hair stuck to her forehead, sticky with perspiration. Her cheeks were flushed and she was pretty sure she'd radiated enough heat to make the hair on the top of her head go frizzy from humidity. Heaving a sigh, she stopped herself before she could stick her tongue out at her reflection in exasperation. She was in desperate need of a shower, but right now she'd have to make do with splashing some water on her face.

Oliver moved in the reflection behind her and her eyes snapped over to him instead as she scrubbed at her hands. She watched him slowly roll his injured shoulder back and forth as he walked to grab a clean shirt. Pain flickered across his face as he gingerly pulled on his shirt. She thought the saw a grimace for a fraction of a second before he schooled his face back into the neutral and guarded expression he usually wore.

Shaking her head at his reflection, Felicity spun around quickly when a series of short beeps from her computer alerted her to a new presence in the warehouse.

"So the drop's been made," announced Diggle only a few seconds later. Walking in, he dropped an empty black duffle bag near the equipment area. Shedding his jacket, he walked over to the rows of racks of equipment and picked up what looked like a stick. It probably had a name and Oliver would probably be offended if she called it a stick to his face, but she hadn't bothered to learn all the names of the dozens of various types of weapons he and Diggle had collected.

"We've got at least a few hours, if not more, to kill before the target picks it up," Diggle continued as he slowly started making patterns in the air with the practice weapon he held in one hand. He waved it towards Oliver and with a teasing grin he asked, "How's your shoulder?"

Oliver crossed his arms across his chest, his face remaining passive. "I'll live."

Diggle's grin broadened. "I didn't doubt that for one second."

Oliver cocked his head to one side thoughtfully and turned slowly to face Felicity where she still stood by the sink slowly wiping her hands dry with a towel. Felicity's eyes widened when she saw the expression on Oliver's face. She wouldn't go so far as to call it mischievous, but she didn't think she'd be overshooting the mark if she considered it to be at least some sort of watered down version of that – an Oliver Queen style of mischievousness that remained mostly hidden behind the stony set of his features. The only real hint of it was in the faintest twinkle in his blue eyes.

It was not an entirely unattractive look for him and for the first time Felicity was glad her face was still flushed from earlier as it hid the blush she felt creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. Her stomach flipped over and she clutched the towel a little tighter.

"Felicity did however," Oliver declared.

Her eyes widened further. She'd intended to glare at him, but Diggle had stopped whatever it was he'd been doing with that stick to stare at her with an amused expression and the full force of both their stares was enough to fluster her.

"What," was all she could squeak out. She cleared her throat and tried again. "What?" she asked again, her voice stronger. Her eyes flickered between the two men before settling on Oliver. He hadn't moved, but his eyes had brightened further and she had to forcefully ignore the response it triggered in her already somersaulting stomach.

"You thought I'd go the way of Alexander the Great."

"Wait a second -" she started.

"Alexander the Great?" Diggle asked incredulously. "I think you and I need to sit down and have a talk about the things we do not do. Number one being saying things that inflate Oliver Queen's here ego."

Hearing Diggle's playful tone, Felicity felt herself relax. She made a face at both of them, smiling lightly as she tossed the towel onto the counter behind her and walked to join them at the edge of Oliver's training area. She tried to ignore the way Oliver's eyes followed her. "I wasn't going for flattery."

"It's true," Oliver agreed. "She was teaching me a very important lesson."

"Don't pick a fight with a fence when an armed gunman will do?" Diggle offered.

Oliver shifted his stare to Diggle. "You think you're hilarious," Oliver observed dryly.

"I have been told something to that effect on occasion."

Oliver narrowed his eyes slightly before pulling his head slightly back to regard Diggle with a more intense stare. "You're happier than you were when I left you."

"One might say those two things were connected," Felicity murmured under her breath. When both men turned their head towards her - Diggle with a quietly bemused expression and Oliver with a raised eyebrow – Felicity realised that they'd heard her and rushed to clarify.

"Not that I would say that," she amended, her hands gesturing wildly. "I mean, I did say that," she emphasised, hoping that they understood she was referring to her statement. "But I wouldn't be the one to say that the two things were at all connected. Why would they be? They wouldn't. At all."

"They may have been slightly connected," Diggle allowed.

Oliver's narrow-eyed stare turned into a glare, but there was no real menace behind it. Felicity allowed the smile that had been creeping along the edges of her mouth to take shape on her face and she laughed.

Diggle took a step back and turned towards Felicity. He started making those patterns again with the practice weapon and Felicity looked at him with a questioning expression.

"While Mr. Queen here takes some time to heal from his debilitating wound, what do you say to a little self-defense class, Ms. Smoak?"

He was joking, of this Felicity was sure. It must have been written all over her face because Diggle stopped his movements and regarded her honestly.

"I promise we'll start slow."

"That's not necessary," Felicity practically stammered. "Really not necessary."

She felt rather than saw Oliver move closer to her, his elbow nudging her in the side lightly. He spoke near enough to her ear that she could feel his breath fanning across the side of her face. "Unfortunately, one day it might become all too necessary." His tone was serious and Felicity swallowed the protest she'd prepared. He wasn't wrong.

His tone was lighter the next time he spoke and he managed to catch her by surprise with another light nudge against her side. This time it succeeded in drawing her gaze up to his face. His eyes were doing that not unattractive thing where they weren't steely or hard, but actually softening and it was throwing her off.

"I'll even let you try a little archery. Who knows? Maybe we'll even make it your thing."

"What?" Was Felicity's strangled response.

That was a word that Felicity felt she'd been using all too often that night, but between Diggle's outstretched hand and expectant expression and Oliver's failed attempts to hide a growing smile, Felicity felt like she'd stepped into an alternate universe where Oliver Queen had a sense of humour.

So despite another word's shoddy track record in keeping one Felicity Smoak far removed from things she decidedly would rather not be doing – given how this evening had begun – she tried it again, this time dragging it out for effect.

"Noooooo."


End file.
